Roger Aylworth: Winds of disaster in Oklahoma turn away from my family

Aaron answered my call so quickly that, at my end, I didn't even hear the signal that it was ringing.

I was calling my eldest son, Aaron, who lives in Mustang, Okla., last Monday afternoon. I knew tornadoes had swept through the region the day before and I just wanted an update.

From the moment Aaron saw my name on his cellphone's caller ID he was talking.

Without saying "hello" or any other kind of salutation, Aaron launched into a fearful monologue.

"A hailstorm has just really beat up my truck and that noise you can hear, that's the sound of the flood water rushing under the truck."

I felt like I had just stepped into the middle of a movie. I didn't have a handle on the whole storyline, but I knew something bad was going on.

"Where are you?" I asked.

"I'm trying to get home. I want to be with Barbara (his genuinely extraordinary wife) and the kids," he said.

His oldest, his son Austin, and his high-school graduate "baby" daughter Alexis were supposed to be at their home.

Trying to sound calm and rational, I asked, "Aaron, what is going on?"

"Can you hear them Dad?"

There was a wailing sound in the background but I couldn't identify the nose.

"Dad, those are the tornado sirens. They are going off in every direction."

"Are you OK?"

There was tension and something else I have almost never heard in Aaron's voice, fear. At that point Aaron had a single goal. He was desperate to gather his wife and children under his roof in their rental home that doesn't have a storm cellar.

I have never been in a real tornado, but I have seen enough reruns of the "Wizard of Oz" to know that survival in a "twister" often means taking shelter underground.

Aaron assured me he had a friend who has a storm shelter, and he would take them in.

My son needed to get off the phone because driving was getting difficult. We said a quick farewell and I felt my own terrors taking hold.

Sitting at my desk in my newsroom office, I realized there was nothing I could do for my son and his family from 2,000 miles away. What I could do was pray and worry. Prayer made good sense. Worry seemed pointless but it wasn't a situation I could change.

I found an Oklahoma City radio station on the Web and for the next nearly three hours I listened as broadcasters, often choking back tears, described war-zone scenes of a town called Moore. Homes and businesses were shredded to nearly nothing by the devil winds, and I had no idea where Moore was relative to Mustang.

Eventually the storm unraveled, leaving a path of devastation in its wake that was almost impossible to comprehend. Homes, schools and businesses had been converted to a waist-high field of unidentifiable debris. The death of 24 people, some of them children, was more heart-rending.

Even so, I couldn't help but feel joyous. The literal winds of disaster turned away from the people I love. I was and am grateful, deeply and profoundly grateful.

Roger H. Aylworth is a staff writer with the Enterprise-Record. His column appears every Sunday and he can be reached at 896-7762 or @RogerAylworth on Twitter.